BBC to cut 2,900 jobs

December 07, 2004 19:17 IST

The British Broadcasting Corporation on Tuesday said it would cut about 2,900 jobs, more than 10 per cent of its workforce, as a part of "transformation" of the world's biggest public broadcaster, aimed at saving 320 million pounds a year.

Most of the jobs would be cut from the administrative departments, BBC director general, Mark Thompson was quoted on BBC's website as saying. He said the savings were needed so that more of the licence fee could be put into programmes.

About 1,800 workers, including staff of BBC's 24-hour radio news channel and two children's channels, would be moved from London to Manchester in the next five years, he said. The BBC World Service had also been asked to make "significant savings," Thompson said.

The departments hardest hit by the cutbacks are professional services, including human resources, training, finances and legal services. Thompson said the job losses would be through redundancies and outsourcing of posts during the next three years.

The BBC employs about 27,000 people and most departments would be expected to make 15 per cent cuts in savings.

Thompson said the BBC should "spend less on process and more on content". The BBC would only survive in the digital world if it invested more in areas such as journalism, drama, comedy, music, learning, and children's TV and radio.

He said audiences wanted a "BBC which is totally focused on excellence, which gives them more quality, more ambition, more depth than they get from any other broadcaster".